My Art Opening

Last night the Jewish Artists Lab had the opening for our art show. A member who is a poet started it off with a spoken word performance, and then people milled around and looked at the works. We got a nice turnout, so it turned out to be a lot of fun.

Here are my works:

I don't know if you can tell on a screen that they are embroidered figures of Jewish immigrants on cloth printed with ship manifests from around 1900. They are a Jewish interpretation of Plains Indians' ledger paintings, like this one:

Native Americans from the Plains began painting on ledger paper after buffalo became rare and then extinct. So, I replaced the ledger paper with the ship manifest and the Native American drawings with Jewish themes.

People seemed to like them, so that made me happy, too!

Shop with a Blogger

Earlier this year, I was lucky to receive a sampling of lotion bars in the beta stage. Maker and blogger Alicia Landi of Woolen Diversions was looking for feedback on three different samples she had made. I was not a very helpful sampler, though, as I loved them all!

Thankfully, other testers had some preferences and, with their help, Alicia went on to launch Sweet Sheep Solid Lotion Bars:

This is great stuff. At the risk of sounding like a paid ad (which this is not!), I can say that it's not even December and the air here is cold and dry. My Sweet Sheep Solid Lotion Bar is keeping my hands from being painfully dry!

The bars are handmade from all-natural ingredients, like cocoa butter, mango butter, sweet almond oil, coconut oil, meadowfoam oil, and vitamin E oil as well as lanolin. And the scents are amazing! I pulled a Turkish Mocha-scented bar out of my purse recently when I was at a restaurant with friends and everyone at the table was seduced by the scent. They all wanted to know how they could get one of these.

I bought enough for all the women in my family for Hanukkah (none of them knit, so I don't think I'm giving away anything).

By now, I'm sure that you want to know how you can get your dry, chapped hands on one of these. It's easy because Alicia has an Etsy shop here.

The only problem you'll have is deciding which one of the amazing scents you want. I do highly recommend the Turkish Mocha, but I don't think you can go wrong with any of them.

And speaking of shops, I have my one craft fair of the year tomorrow. It's a great show that benefits Madison's Arboretum and the show features only local producers. You can get everything there from clothing to organic honey to jewelry. I have been taking it easy this weekend but I'm going to have to get going today.

I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely. I am always happy if I can have both my children at the table at the same time. Seth lives here in Madison, but he's in vet school so I don't see a lot of him. Rachel is in grad school at the University of Miami and she did not enjoy the wintery weather here. Still, it was great to have her home. She flew back yesterday and the house is too quiet without her.

I Am Rich

Ok, that may be an exaggeration. But I made more than $300 at the Local Products art show on Sunday. I realize this is small change, but it is a record for me. This is a fairly small show, but this little success makes me want to shoot higher.

However, I'm going to have to do something about my display first:

It's pretty amateurish, I know. Designing a low-cost display is harder than you might think. I know that I need to go to some other shows/fairs and really pay attention to the displays. It's just so easy to get distracted by what they are selling!

Doing a show on Sunday was exhausting after the Thanksgivakkah weekend, but it was worth it!

Am I Famous Yet?

So, I spent today selling jewelry at a very nice art show. It was a good day -- most profitable show I've had yet -- though I won't be resigning from my day tomorrow (as I had fantasized!).

This lovely young woman walks up to me and says, "I know you from Wordpress!"

I have a feeling that was my 15 seconds of fame.

It was CaityRosy of All She Wants To Do Is Knit. And she needs your help. She has just gotten engaged and is trying to decide what to knit for the occasion. She has three candidates posted on her blog. Go one over there and help the girl out!